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The way Russians use them is obsolete… just like Russian tanks. Combined arms maneuvering is what they _should_ be doing. In fact Russia reorganized to theoret

The way Russians use them is obsolete… just like Russian tanks. Combined arms maneuvering is what they _should_ be doing. In fact Russia reorganized to theoretically be setup for this sort of maneuvering; they organized into BTGs (battalion tactical groups) which contain basically everything: air defense (area denial and SHORAD), logistics (refuel, resupply, rearm, repair), infantry, armor, air attack, engineering, artillery, and I’m probably leaving a few out. To this end they’ve been completely ineffective. They started as the second best army in the world, then went to the second best army in Ukraine, and now they are the second best army in Russia.

hajile 2y ago
How do you do combined arms into a minefield? It's a WW1-style mess where combined arms simply don't work. Ukraine tried NATO tactics summer of last year and suffered a catastrophic defeat. Going across minefields requires convoys. Russian helicopters outside of MANPADS range (and too low to be visible to SAM site radar) take out the minesweeper and rear vehicles. Now you've got a bunch of sitting ducks. If it looks like escape is possible, artillery remote-mines the path the minesweeper cleared. Try your luck in the minefield and you get destroyed. Get out to fight and the anti-personnel mines take everyone out. Stay in place and the regular artillery takes out all the troops. At night, you get grenade and RPG-dropping drones with IR cameras so you can't even hide. I ask again, what is your combined arms solution to this mess?
- tomjen3 2y ago
  Do what Ukraine did: attack in another place. But it is like asking what is the healthy thing to do when you are 300 pounds and can run because you have heart issues: the answer is to never be in that position in the first place. Anyway I assume the US has some sort of remote detonation mine plan for if shit gets hot with NK.
  - hajile 2y ago
    Russia didn't defend Kursk because they didn't think Ukraine would be stupid enough to make that attack. That was a temporary PR win and a permanent strategic loss. The results have been the elimination of Ukraine's best troops AND losing the ability to reinforce faltering lines which is why Russian advances have increased. Maneuver warfare relies on secrecy to a large degree. You can hide strategic troop buildups from the Taliban because they don't have satellites, but not from a near peer. With current spotter drones and IR cameras, you can't really even rely on tactical secrecy.
red-iron-pine 2y ago
Russians BTGs were a failure, an attempt to create a hyper-flexible swiss army knife for offensive + defensive + occupation activities, which then fell apart when they faced peer-level resistance from the Ukranians. The BTGs were mostly Infantry and Artillery, supplemented with Tanks and specialty assets. Heavy losses in one of the main three segment made the rest of the BTG mostly or entirely combat-ineffective. And that's basically what happened -- the infantry and tanks died, and artillery was relatively untouched, which led to Russia sending convicts (Storm-Z) to find targets for the (still remaining, quite numerous) artillery. They did not have real, integrated logistics and heavy engineering units on the BTG level (though they do have combat engineers / sappers). What supply units they do have are limited, and they are dependent on higher level replenishment organizations for operations lasting longer than 6 days. Those replenishment orgs inevitably got bombed by the AFU, so the BTGs rapidly ran out of gas and ammo, even when rocking a full TO&E. They did have integrated EW and HUMINT capabilities, with the EW being particularly potent; Russian EW is still very good, even on the BTG level. The downside of these, though, is that they are a swiss army knife; small enough to be useful, but not big enough to be ideal (and withstand casualties), and it forces a busy commander to divide their attention in ways that a larger org may not.

hajile 2y ago

How do you do combined arms into a minefield? It's a WW1-style mess where combined arms simply don't work. Ukraine tried NATO tactics summer of last year and suffered a catastrophic defeat. Going across minefields requires convoys. Russian helicopters outside of MANPADS range (and too low to be visible to SAM site radar) take out the minesweeper and rear vehicles. Now you've got a bunch of sitting ducks. If it looks like escape is possible, artillery remote-mines the path the minesweeper cleared. Try your luck in the minefield and you get destroyed. Get out to fight and the anti-personnel mines take everyone out. Stay in place and the regular artillery takes out all the troops. At night, you get grenade and RPG-dropping drones with IR cameras so you can't even hide. I ask again, what is your combined arms solution to this mess?

tomjen3 2y ago
Do what Ukraine did: attack in another place. But it is like asking what is the healthy thing to do when you are 300 pounds and can run because you have heart issues: the answer is to never be in that position in the first place. Anyway I assume the US has some sort of remote detonation mine plan for if shit gets hot with NK.
- hajile 2y ago
  Russia didn't defend Kursk because they didn't think Ukraine would be stupid enough to make that attack. That was a temporary PR win and a permanent strategic loss. The results have been the elimination of Ukraine's best troops AND losing the ability to reinforce faltering lines which is why Russian advances have increased. Maneuver warfare relies on secrecy to a large degree. You can hide strategic troop buildups from the Taliban because they don't have satellites, but not from a near peer. With current spotter drones and IR cameras, you can't really even rely on tactical secrecy.

red-iron-pine 2y ago

Russians BTGs were a failure, an attempt to create a hyper-flexible swiss army knife for offensive + defensive + occupation activities, which then fell apart when they faced peer-level resistance from the Ukranians. The BTGs were mostly Infantry and Artillery, supplemented with Tanks and specialty assets. Heavy losses in one of the main three segment made the rest of the BTG mostly or entirely combat-ineffective. And that's basically what happened -- the infantry and tanks died, and artillery was relatively untouched, which led to Russia sending convicts (Storm-Z) to find targets for the (still remaining, quite numerous) artillery. They did not have real, integrated logistics and heavy engineering units on the BTG level (though they do have combat engineers / sappers). What supply units they do have are limited, and they are dependent on higher level replenishment organizations for operations lasting longer than 6 days. Those replenishment orgs inevitably got bombed by the AFU, so the BTGs rapidly ran out of gas and ammo, even when rocking a full TO&E. They did have integrated EW and HUMINT capabilities, with the EW being particularly potent; Russian EW is still very good, even on the BTG level. The downside of these, though, is that they are a swiss army knife; small enough to be useful, but not big enough to be ideal (and withstand casualties), and it forces a busy commander to divide their attention in ways that a larger org may not.